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9 December 2013

Greetings earthlings

So I haven't updated this blog in a long while - apologies for that. Much of the reason is to do with having two little girls and a 7 month old baby to deal with! Have been working on lots of interesting stuff and have a few announcements to make in due course, but for now am dropping bye to say hi and promise I'm going to be back updating this blog more regularly. While I've been neglecting this website, I've been beavering away primarily at the Guardian on a range of important environment stories. From the Arctic methane time-bomb debate, to accumulating evidence that climate change is happening faster and more intensely than conventional models project; from the problems with Tory and Labour energy proposals, to the World Health Organisation's cover-up of Iraq's environmental health nightmare due to depleted uranium; from Russell Brand's notorious BBC Newsnight interview on the death of mainstream politics, to the imminence of peak oil; from corporate espionage against activists, charities and NGOs, to today's big story on the US Navy's prediction that the Arctic summer sea ice could collapse by 2016. If any of these sound up your street, you can check out these stories via my Guardian blog, Earth Insight.

Hey, two little girls plus a 7 month old baby.... that is more than enough to justify any amount of tardiness, even without all the other projects you are working on. If I find a place that will sell 3 consecutive nights of 8 hour uninterrupted sleeps, at a reasonable price, I'll buy it as a Xmas present for you. As I recall they are hard to find.Cheers

Acclaim

"International security analyst and consultant who has spent much time looking at how environmental risks and terrorism threaten our eco-security and well-being." -- The Evening Standard's 1000 most influential Londoners 2014

"Yes, yes, I know he is one of Them. But they often know things that we don’t – particularly about what we are up to" -- Gore Vidal, The Observer

"Ahmed is that rare breed of journalist who finds stories everyone else either misses or chooses to overlook; he regularly joins up the dots in a global system of corporate pillage... a voice from the genuine left, and one too independent to control" -- Jonathan Cook, former Guardian columnist and foreign desk editor

"If you still need something to worry about, how about a grand conflagration of climate, financial, energy, food, and civil-liberties crises, which might destroy the world as we know it before the century is out?... Forceful and well sourced" -- Steven Poole, The Guardian

"Lucid and persuasive account of how our security mandarins talked themselves into believing we could make quiet, backroom deals with terrorists" -- Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

"Disturbing and clearly evidenced... Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed traces the unholy games played with Islamist terrorists by the US, and through acquiescence by the UK, flirting with them when it suited and then turning against them" -- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent

"Respected terror analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed pulls apart the official narrative of 7/7, pointing out its gaps and contradictions... The authorities seem to be unable to answer many of the most basic questions about the 7/7 bombings ... it has taken a study by an academic outsider, Ahmed, to assess the extent of the bombers’ international terrorist connections." -- Editorial, Independent on Sunday

"One of the most illuminating voices in the British media" -- Rob Hopkins, founder, Transition Towns movement

"Nafeez Ahmed’s understanding of the post 9/11 power game, its lies, illusions and dangers, is no less than brilliant. Everyone should read this wise and powerfully illuminating book." -- John Pilger, Emmy and BAFTA award-winning journalist

"I wish every American who still believes in the good intentions of our government would read this book. Drawing upon his impressive research into recent history, Nafeez Ahmed skilfully exposes the real motives behind the 'war on terrorism' and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq." -- Howard Zinn

"Nafeez Ahmed demonstrates brilliantly that the war on freedom is inseparable from the war on truth." -- Vandana Shiva

"As carefully laid out and sourced as one could want... I find the author's argument that the US, the UK, and France, among others, have been actively using terrorists, nurturing terrorists, as part of a geopolitical and economic strategy, and that in their naiveté they nurtured a force they cannot control today, to be completely credible" -- Robert D. Steele, founding Deputy Director, US Marine Corps Intelligence Command

"An impressive study of key crises confronting our civilization... a unique attempt to demonstrate their systematic interconnections... Ahmed is very deliberately a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary scholar... Throughout, [he] draws convincingly and commandingly on a number of fields, including climate sciences, geology, monetary and financial economics, and systems theory, among many others" -- Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

"A powerful and convincing account of how our civilization is threatened by a system of crises... [Ahmed] clearly and directly explains that, while the impact of each of these crises is great, we can only understand their true impact and how to potentially solve or mitigate them as a system" -- The Oil Drum (Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future)

About this blog

"posits that in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so."

Deep political analysis digs

"beneath public formulations of policy issues to the bureaucratic, economic, and ultimately covert and criminal activities which underlie them."

(Peter Dale Scott, University of California, Berkeley)

On this blog, I engage in deep political analysis in the context of the Crisis of Civilization – the convergence and escalation of environmental degradation, species extinctions, climate change, energy depletion, food crisis, water shortages, economic/financial instability, inequality/poverty, religious/political extremism, moral confusion, mental illness, and finally, philosophical/epistemological vacuity. As these crises systemically converge and accelerate, Civilization continues to respond largely with denial, guaranteeing a business-as-usual trajectory toward worst case scenarios. The only viable alternative is to respond through direct confrontation with that which has been suppressed.